Biblewomen from London to China: the transnational appropriation of a female mission idea

Abstract

Ellen Ranyard’s 1857 mission project for metropolitan Biblewomen suggests that the use of ‘native agency’ in Christian work overseas was also applied as a solution to the neediest areas of central London. Meanwhile, early Protestant mission efforts to reach segregated women in China and start schools for girls often drew on the help of selected village Biblewomen. The next step was to train such co‐workers more systematically and educate women in the churches more generally. Mission approaches to such female Bible schooling are analysed via vignettes of Baptist and China Inland Mission women activists in both south and north China. By the 1920s, the production of a phonetic Chinese script greatly increased the accessibility of the Bible, while tertiary education emerged for the more gifted. The significant number of women evangelists in the fast‐growing church in China today points to the strength of the Christian female educational and evangelistic legacy first embodied in Chinese Biblewomen.